


Slender Rowan Tree

by englishable



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-26
Updated: 2015-07-26
Packaged: 2018-04-11 08:11:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4427918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/englishable/pseuds/englishable
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sif has never put much stock in symbols, especially those that the mortals once ascribed to her; they are also the ones who once assumed she was married to Thor, after all, which is naturally impossible nonsense. Still, the gift that he brings her is a thoughtful one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Slender Rowan Tree

…

The branch he carries in one hand has long, arrow-shaped leaves, and a clutch of berries so red they shine like garnets in the gray light. Thor holds it aloft as a greeting as he comes down the steps.

“Lady Sif!” His voice swells out to fill the empty training courtyard, strikes against the stone columns. “Sparring with your shadow again, I see.”

The breath goes out of her in a white, sighing cloud.

“I’m afraid it’s the only way to ensure myself of a challenging opponent.” She brings the hewing spear around and rams its point into the hard-frozen earth. “We did not expect your return for another fortnight. Are the mortals well?”

He stoops, lays the strange tree branch aside, and runs his fingers down the weapons rack with a sort of urbane impassivity before selecting another spear. Falling snow clings to his hay-colored hair.  

“Well enough. Stark declared we should have a brief respite from our work – I believe that meant he wished for one himself, and left us all to find our own amusements in the meanwhile.”

“And am I expected to amuse you, my lord?”

Sif has always marveled at how so large a man, framed as he is along the stolid, immovable proportions of an oak, should still manage to carry such an air about him – that sort of gamesome, elated, spring-heeled deportment common among children and practical jokers alike. In three steps he stands facing her across the clean-swept yard.

“Ah.” He twirls the spear into a guarded position, drops an exaggerated bow. “You can try.”

(And the mortal woman, what of her? Perhaps he has already been to see her, perhaps he will go to her next. He has been given free leave to do so, after all. 

But this is not Sif’s place to wonder – better for her to take in the unweighted set to his shoulders, the broad smile on his face, both of which are becoming rather rarer these days.)

She knocks aside the first high, forward thrust, fits the length of her spear beneath his raised arms to swing him off-balance. He turns easily with the momentum, despite all her scolding that his damnable cloak will someday get him tangled up like a cat in yarn. The steel points spark against one another in a succession of quick parries.

(When first they sparred together in earnest – when she was but a child, he little more – Thor struck her across the mouth so hard she had nearly bitten her tongue in half. Bent double and choking, Sif had tensed her back for the flat impact of his mockery. She deserved no less for a foolish defensive error .

Instead the future king had cast aside his quarterstaff, and knelt in the dust before her, and waited there without a word as she spat blood into his cupped hands.

 _“No teeth lost,”_  he’d declared, later.  _“Well done! Did you clench your jaw in time? My father always says that a blow properly received is as good as any counter-strike.”_ )

Then Thor sends the spear whistling down, aimed for the arch of her foot. She steps within the gap created, locks their right legs together at the knees and ankles, and uses her elbow to tumble him backwards over her thigh. He is knocked flat with a cloud of snow. 

Her humming, ringing spear-point stops just above the exposed pulse in his throat. Sif watches the muscles there slide when he swallows. 

“I’ve long said how using that hammer breeds bad habits,” she says. “You imagine every enemy at close-quarters will need as wide a space to swing about in as you do. You open yourself so wide, I think you expect them to embrace you.”

Thor laces both fieldstone-heavy hands together across his chest like a man in repose. A laugh tumbles through him as another snowflake lands on his nose, in his beard, on his eyelashes. He pays them no mind.

“That would surprise them, at the very least. I will employ it as an ambush tactic in the future.” He lifts an elbow towards the branch with its red berries, left lying on the step. “But we can discuss that later – this is hardly the way to treat someone who has brought a present for you. Mayhap you can guess what it is?”

Sif steps over his sprawled legs and goes to pick up the branch, gently, with the tips of her fingers. It is not a plant of Asgard, and a brief moment spent holding one of its red berries on her tongue – a bracing, puckering sourness fills her mouth – confirms her suspicion.

A deliberate pause follows. 

Then she turns towards Thor as he hefts himself upright, and is glad that the cold air offers some excuse for the blotched flush spreading over her cheeks.

“You have brought me the branch of a rowan tree.”

He brushes snow off his shoulders. 

“We had recent business on the island of England – that land the Saxons and Jutes held, before the Norse lay claim to it? As I recall, mortals once used the rowan as your symbol. I didn’t think you had ever seen a live one up close before.”

“No,” she says. “I haven’t.”

She stares down at the branch again.

A goddess of wedlock, the Norse people had taken her for. A goddess with long golden hair like summer wheat. What a wild misunderstanding: though she could not have expected any less from a race of storytellers who never quite know how to separate historical fact from fanciful whim, who had also assumed she was married to the man now standing beside her.

An embarrassment for both of them, really. They had laughed about it together. 

And a goddess of fertility, as well, Sif cannot forget that part: she once heard tales of the sprigs cut from rowan trees each year, bound in twine by women now centuries-dead and hung up as needless, useless prayers to her – that she might coax life from their barren soil, and their barren flesh, and occasionally their men’s barren hearts.

How very foolish. Sif cannot even achieve such things for herself.

(But she has washed his blood from her hands, just as he has washed hers from his. They have been covered by the same mud, and rain, and snow. They have taken drinks from the same goblet offered in toast, they have mourned the same losses.

This too must count for something.)

“…The wood was never much use for making weapons.” Sif drops the berry between her feet. “They favored ash for that, I hear. I don’t believe the berries were ever made into medicine, either – I see no reason why they should’ve wanted such a tree to mean protection. ”

“But it was also the wood they used for walking sticks, was it not? A fighter who lived to old age would’ve found that far more valuable than any weapon, I imagine. And the berries can be brewed into an excellent wine.” Thor winks at her, a suggestiveness she knows is both laden and meaningless. “I think it suits you.”

Sif turns the silly branch over one last time, studying its pragmatically unimaginative wood and its bitter-tasting fruit and its hollow promises, and then reaches out to swat him lightly on the cheek. Thor reacts with the scandalized indignation of a man who has been slapped.

“It’s flexible, anyway,” she says. “And what did I just tell you? You leave yourself far too open.”

Then they go away together, talking, matching each other stride for stride.

(What Sif does not see is this: 

She does not see the living tree from which he has cut this single bough, its berries colored like deep-dyed red cloth – like the red cloth worn beneath her armor, in fact, a red his eye has learned to seek out first and last in every battle. She does not see its limbs, tall and gracile and strong, outstretched for the protection of all those who pass beneath it.

He, however, does.)

…

**Author's Note:**

> The rowan tree was associated with Sif in Norse mythology as a symbol of protection, probably because of the story about Thor clinging to the branches of one when he was about to be swept away by the rivers of the Underworld. I dunno, I like mixing the original lore with what Marvel offers us.
> 
> Thanks you all again for reading.


End file.
